


Rewind

by Hyoushin



Series: blue winter roses [8]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gray Jon Snow, Grim/Dark, Minor Violence, Resurrected Jon, Reunion Fic, War, jonrya secret santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 08:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13142709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyoushin/pseuds/Hyoushin
Summary: 'He lets his sword join hers, the intent to slaughter one and the same.'





	Rewind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KaleidoKai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaleidoKai/gifts).



> For the amazing **KaleidoKai** based on her wishlist. I combined your prompts I guess? o_O  
>  BAMF!Arya + Reunion + Anything goes.  
> I feel it ended up kinda dark/grim, it's not christmas-y and a bit angsty but still...I dearly hope that you like it.
> 
> Cover Art by super graphics wizard Lijee! Thank you for your support! It means a lot to me!

 

Jon hears a whistle, then the squish of something hitting its target. He spins around to find a white walker toppling to the ground, a Valyrian blade embedded in the back of its head. He seizes the hilt and pulls out the weapon, the smoky hues of its surface springing a sense of familiarity he had no time to dwell on.

His gaze rises and catches a figure, a young woman, he assumes, judging by the fine contours of her body. Nimble fingers twirl a dragonglass spear, unfailingly thrusting its end into the hearts and minds of the dead surrounding her. The sense of familiarity peaks—releasing a feeling that injects a rush of vigor into him. His grip on both swords tightens and he starts towards her, his progress marked by lopped off skulls.

Jon watches her leap over a row of cadavers, grace and lethality etched in her moves as she breaks through a wave of blue-eyed assailants. She slashes at the enemy without hesitance, the swiftness of her attacks rendering her a blur hard to discern. Brown locks and a piece of cloth obscure the bottom half of her face, so he cannot satiate the urgency of discovering her identity.

Jon closes up on her position. He throws her the sword and she snatches it from the air. She revolves with both weapons in her hands, halting to hack off the limbs of the abominations she chooses to face fearlessly. He slices a torso in two as she dodges out of the way with a timed crouch. Jumping to her feet, she flings the spear at the dead beings coming up behind him. Perhaps he should wonder how it is that she can read him so well, but he is locked in a continual spell where there is only space for a kill after another and nothing else.

And although not one verbal exchange passes between them, battle experience and possibly something even more visceral and elusive make it possible for them to fall into step; Jon absently marvels at that as he lets his sword join hers, the intent to slaughter one and the same. 

Her respiration grows loud but she keeps on going, defending his back until there is no more immediate danger. He is aware of being among soldiers and fighters, every one of them stubborn survivors dispersed throughout the frozen terrain, still alive and fighting, but the lean body sagging against his back engrosses him. Somehow, her presence charges the lull they have managed to attain through blood and violence.

“Who are you?” Jon rasps.

“Family,” she asserts. “Someone you used to know.”

Jon turns around, the word _family_ scrambling the fragments of his oldest memories, the cadence of her voice triggering a torrent of yearning.  
_Who are you?_

The youth sweeps back her hair, drags down the cloth, and uncovers a face set with delicate features that announce an ancient descent. _You look like me_ and he’s sure this is a fact even if most days he can’t discriminate his actual reflection from the distortions fabricated by his mind. Her appearance is saturated with brown and grey and the frost of the North and that tells him she might be real; he wants more than colors and a bareboned hunch to sustain this chance though, for the girl he once resolved to save wasn’t who she was supposed to be when he sought her out.

“Might this be what jogs your memory,” the woman says. And so she reaches for an object hidden by her cloak, knowing he needs proof of some kind and draws it out for him.

The fear of being mistaken has inhibited the swell of hope and optimism, but then he fixates on the slight, thin blade forged in Winterfell and the blockade cinching his heart quakes. “Its name?” If she utters the wrong name he might have to end her. Imposters have dried out his patience.

He detects a glint of defiance as she intones, “ _Needle._ You gave it to me before you left me.”

Jon links his gaze to hers, stops opposing the lure suspended between them and folds her in his arms. He inclines his head towards her, buries his nose in her neck and splinters of a past self help him to decide that her smell is right, that she is who he has been looking for since the instant he wakened. The sole purpose that trailed him into his second life, carrying the memory of her.

“I came back for you.” She studies him, her searching look brands his soul. “Do _you_ recognize me?”

Jon thinks of the one clear image seared into his dreams: that of a little girl showering him with kisses over and over again; her smile and her joy undisturbed by notions of arranged marriages and undeserving monsters; exceedingly brave in the face of danger but in need of shelter and protection. This woman and what he has seen she is capable of clashes with these thoughts. He sees a woman who protects herself with sharp edges and refined techniques—who searched for him and now asks if he remembers her at all.  
  
Jon plunges into the unknown, dropping the name haunting his nights, “Arya.”

And she comes alive in his arms. Her true beauty in the radiance taking over her countenance as she gazes up at him, her armor unraveling to give him an entry into her heart. “ _Jon,_ ” she answers, a slight tremor in the gentle sound, his name encased in deep-rooted emotion that bursts through the prison of a past she abandoned.

“Jon Snow.” Arya enunciates his name like a blessing. Fingertips ghost along the scar on his face, the caress filled with interest. She slowly takes in the added layers, the altered parts of him, what he has become. _Can you recognize_ me _?_ But unspoken acceptance already wafts out from her lips. Eyelashes flutter and he unexpectedly slips into red and white to realize, through borrowed eyes, that he has reencountered his equal.

Jon returns to his own skin and permits the phantom of a boy to possess him. So he feels his mouth be steered towards her temples, her cheek, her hair; but the boy fades when he presses her body flush against his, obscenely reveling in the rightness of their closeness. Their bodies fit and he feels all of him palpitate.

He reads _what happens now? what do we do?_ in her expression. He understands what she means for the din of metal against metal, the clamor of the slain, the lamentations of the barely living have begun reverberating through the earth once more.

“What we do best,” he murmurs against her brow. “We stick together and survive.”


End file.
